David Wallace has been an Actors Associate since 2003. This article first appeared in the March/April 2004 supplement to the Actors Associates newsletter, On Cue at Actors.

The Humana Festival is a time of irreverence, audacity, creativity and outrageousness. That is why some of us love it and some of us don’t. We are attracted to the festival because it’s an atypical theatre experience. The plays make us feel uneasy, but they also are exciting, exhilarating, groundbreaking and fascinating.

It is fascinating for me to watch the audience during a Humana play. Sometimes they watch on the way out the door! Humana, as they say, ain’t your parents’ theatre experience. It’s, well, it’s just Humana. Theatrical creativity cannot be quantified. Why our opinions differ on the festival’s plays is because each of them evokes feelings in us. They push us out of neutral gear and force us to react. Playwrights and actors are sanctioned to succeed gloriously and fail miserably and the audience is sanctioned to get down! It is very difficult to sit through a festival play and not get emotionally involved. That’s the heart of the Humana Festival and it is what makes it different from, say, A Christmas Carol. We know Tiny Tim will live but we don’t know what’s going to happen in a festival play.

So get angry, get happy, but don’t just sit there, it’s time for March Madness!